From the industry standard Pro Tools to trusted, world-class audio interfaces Avid is a name that the audio community holds in high regard. Why are they the leaders? Let’s find out.
Any professional recording studio has Avid products as the brain, connecting the dots, and making sure that magic performance is captured. In fact, one such major recording studio based in Australia recently swapped out all of its interfaces for Avid interfaces as they are much more stable (enough tea spilt!).
However, no expense spared facilities are not the only ones trusting their digital workflow to the hands of Avid. Writer/Producer Louis Bell (Post Malone, Camila Cabello, Halsey, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, 5 Seconds of Summer, Taylor Swift) uses Pro Tools from the nucleus of a song’s idea to the finished product. Yes, he makes beats in this DAW as well as recording everything.
In Avid’s most recent update to Pro Tools they’ve made creativity easier with the inclusion of two new features: Melodyne integration and Aux I/O. With Aux I/O you can record the input of your video chat and with Melodyne integration — powered by ARA technology — you can take just a part of an audio clips and process it, not transfer the audio into third-party plugin. Welcome to the world of workflow and worldwide connectivity. We made a video on this update, watch that here: Engineering the Sound | Avid Pro Tools Update 2022.9 Full Demo and Review
Avid’s HDX systems really have recordings in mind as it offers latency-free recording (sound like heaven to anyone!?) and their Avid HD I/O interfaces connect and route studios making both recordings and mixing of the highest quality. You’ll find that even the older Avid 192s are still in use in professional setups.
Avid has also got the smaller end of the market in mind with the recent release of the Mbox Studio (21 x 22 simultaneous I/O at 24-bit/96 kHz) of their Pro Tools Carbon and Carbon Pre (25 x 34 simultaneous I/O and 4 headphones out). It’s this move into smaller, highly flexible and affordable products that do mean Avid are thinking about all types of music makers.
I mean Avid bought the company — Digidesign — that started this whole thing with the original Mbox released in 2002 with Pro Tools 5 LE and the 002 and 003 rack units.
As well as all this audio interfacing and audio editing, Avid also make one of the greats in music notation software: Sibelius. Sibelius has grown so much since I was at university studying music and transcribing Miles Davis, now it even has a complete sound library and you can also use it on your mobile device.
Another brilliant piece of software they have is Media Composer. It’s an industry-standard video editing software that is one of the most reliable pieces of software and suits huge teams — think TV stations and Hollywood. It’s completely customisable and hardware supported throughout.
What’s further good for the community of musicians, recording engineers, and video editors is that all of the above-mentioned software has a free version, sure it’s limited, but it’s free! There’s Pro Tools Intro, Media Composer First and Sibelius First. If you do want to get amongst the higher quality level of software Avid has subscriptions as well.
To try out any of these or find out more about Avid head over to their website Avid.com
